Borderlands 2 - Impressions start Page 5

[killbot737]

Mr. Torgue's lines about that gun are awesome. Actually all of his dialogue in that adventure is awesome.

[Holman]

Late to the party! As usual.

I've just finished a playthrough of the main B2 campaign, and now "Continue" starts the whole thing over for me. I can see already that (with my same level 32 character) the opponents are harder and the rewards are greater. However, I'm not really interested in playing through the story again.

Fast travel allows me to go to some of what I assume are the DLC destinations. (I have the GOTY edition.) Are they all unlocked already, or will I have to play through more of the story to see all of them?

[Blackhawk]

They are unlocked. Oasis is Captain Scarlet, Unassuming Dock is Tina, Badass Crater is Torgue. Other one is Hammerlock.

[KDH]

..... However, I'm not really interested in playing through the story again.

you can skip the side quests (gearbox symbol) and just focus on the story quests (vault hunter symbol) and the game goes a lot quicker ...

I was a little dismayed to see they 'expect' you to play thru the entire thing each 'overpower' level in order to gain the necessary equipment to beat whatever overpower level makes your progress stall .. which, for ME, was OP1

[stessier]

I saved the Queen!

Now I'm working on side missions. Is the Raid Boss worth trying to get a group together?

[Bad Demographic]

I saved the Queen!

Now I'm working on side missions. Is the Raid Boss worth trying to get a group together?

I assume you're talking about the one in the castle. The reward is pretty substantial - lots of red chests. You will need to make many trips for everything.
I think the boss in Flamerock is really an arena fight, not a raid boss.

[Blackhawk]

Well, the kids and I finished off The Warrior last night in TVHM, which unlocked UVHM. We have yet to touch the DLC.

If I'm reading correctly (geeze, but people on the internet have trouble giving clear answers), the best choice to run the DLC is to start UVHM and run it from there (we don't have any real intention of running the UVHM campaign.)

Also: It is a pain in the ass to find a high-level Nurse class mod that has decent skills.

[Blackhawk]

And excellent timing. We were clearing out some of the miscellaneous 'unique' weapon quests before starting the DLC and my eldest found the Legendary Soldier class mod - and in a red chest at that. Holy crap that thing looks powerful!

[Isgrimnur]

Made it to over $1M, lost 1/4 of it to the undead kings.

[Isgrimnur]

And the mines of Avarice have taken the second. Duke of Orc can suck it.

[TheMix]

And excellent timing. We were clearing out some of the miscellaneous 'unique' weapon quests before starting the DLC and my eldest found the Legendary Soldier class mod - and in a red chest at that. Holy crap that thing looks powerful!

I like the Legendary class modes. You generally get a LOT more skill points. The problem is that they are usually spread out. They rarely give you just the skills you need/want.

[TheMix]

Made it to over $1M, lost 1/4 of it to the undead kings.

Don't worry about the money. My level 70 can run around Sanctuary, loot all the boxes/lockers, and probably pull in several million in white/green items. At lower levels it seems like you'll never have much money, but it's pretty easy to pick it up later on. The real fun is when you are sitting at $100 million and you lose $7 million for dying... (I think it's 7% per death.)

[Blackhawk]

And excellent timing. We were clearing out some of the miscellaneous 'unique' weapon quests before starting the DLC and my eldest found the Legendary Soldier class mod - and in a red chest at that. Holy crap that thing looks powerful!

I like the Legendary class modes. You generally get a LOT more skill points. The problem is that they are usually spread out. They rarely give you just the skills you need/want.

This one put +5 in every single first-rank skill. He was already using four of the six - we respecced to put one point into each of the others, which were both good ones. Adding an across-the-board bonus to gun damage, fire rate, and turret cooldown on top of that is significant (and the bonuses were in the 30% to 40% range.)

[TheMix]

They are really awesome for some classes. Some classes, however, have trees that don't really work together. In those cases, having all the 1st level skills isn't as useful.

I did get one Legendary class mod that actually had skills much further down the tree. And I think from only 1-2 trees. But I seem to recall they were skills that I wasn't using, so it wasn't very helpful.

If you'd like another one, I can check my storage. I have a few tucked away that are lower level than my characters. And it's unlikely that I'll ever level a duplicate character.

[Blackhawk]

If you'd like another one, I can check my storage. I have a few tucked away that are lower level than my characters. And it's unlikely that I'll ever level a duplicate character.

Oh, that'd be great. The only one I could really use personally would be the Nurse, but my youngest is rocking a Gunzerker to good effect.

[TheMix]

I have:

Level 20 Legendary Siren Class Mod - Cooldown Rate/Gun Damage, +2 to 5 skills; bonus move
Level 25 Legendary Berserker Class Mod - Cooldown Rate/Fire Rate/Melee Damage; +3 to 5 skills (all tier 1 Gunzerker skills); bonus move
Level 58 Legendary Psycho Class Mod - Burn Damage/Magazine Size/Shield Recharge Delay; +5 to 6 skills (don't know if I'll ever get my Psycho high enough level to even consider this one)


Hmm... So not as many as I thought. Unhelpful for you, now, I also have a 71 Siren mod and two level 72 (Siren) Cat mods. No nurse mods, however. I do have a 46 mod for Axton, but he's currently still using it. Not sure when I'll play again and out-level it. Probably not soon enough to matter for you.

Also don't forget to check for new Golden Key codes regularly. I just picked up another 25. With three characters, you probably don't really worry about your weapons, but it's still fun to open the chest up to see what you get.

If you are interested in getting some better weapons, shields, or grenades - I have a lot of those stored away too (primarily legendaries and ones with flavor text). Just let me know what your level is, and what you need, and I'll see what I have.

[Blackhawk]

Looks like I'm right in the middle of them at 50, but I appreciate the offer. Personally, I'm sticking with Nurse regardless, as we really, really need the healing. Popping out eight or nine healing orbs on every phaselock makes a big difference.

[TheMix]

Sometimes, if you have a very focused build, it's simply better to stick with a blue/purple class mod. That way you can get better bonuses for the most important skills. I have at least one character that I did that on.

[KDH]

.... Personally, I'm sticking with Nurse regardless, as we really, really need the healing. Popping out eight or nine healing orbs on every phaselock makes a big difference.

running the 'Bunker' and looting the train car after 'Tinder Flake' (Marcus Mercenary Shop) are generally good for getting Class Mods. Tinderflake is a tough fight for me as there is no place to hide and I can't move fast enough, but I've seen people do it with a sniper easy enough.

[stessier]

I've started back at the gym so my 2 hours of playing every morning have disappeared. This makes me sad.

[Isgrimnur]

Quitter.

[GreenGoo]

Quitter.

I'm running the 4 starting classes through The Pre-Sequel on normal. While ostensibly I am still playing my Krieg through TVHM, I haven't touched him in over a month.

[Isgrimnur]

Once I finish the DLC, I'll likely not come back to the franchise for a while. I need to start cracking on some of these strategy games that I have and figure out if I like them enough to finish a game or officially abandon them.

[Paingod]

I just picked this up for the first time last night. It's very much Borderlands all over again, and I've already fallen back in line with the Commando/Soldier class. It makes me a touch sad that I had to go look up how to sell items.

Overall, having fun blowing stuff up - but I may not be ready for an extended run in a FPS game yet. I've been in a weird gaming funk and none of the 240+ games I have installed are calling out to me.

[Isgrimnur]

Borderlands is the ultimate in low-overhead gaming, though. It's a lot easier to convince myself to shoot things in the face than try and crush the Soviet Union in the Cold War or attempt to take over a galaxy.

[GreenGoo]

Borderlands is the ultimate in low-overhead gaming, though.

+1 billion.

I'm playing the Pre Sequel more than anything right now because nothing else is really grabbing me and I know I can bang out a couple of missions in 15 minutes, not have to think, and have fun doing it.

[Paingod]

Borderlands is the ultimate in low-overhead gaming, though.

+1 billion.

I'm playing he Pre Sequel more than anything right now because nothing else is really grabbing me and I know I can bang out a couple of missions in 15 minutes, not have to think, and have fun doing it.

That's something I tend to go to MechWarrior Online for, too. A few 15 minute rounds, no commitment. I don't know if I could sit down and play Borderlands for 15 minutes. I tend to like my explore/loot/shoot games to run a couple hours per session in order to satisfy that "Just one more loot crate, one more boss" feeling.

[Blackhawk]

Since Borderlands came up in the Randomness thread, and I've been playing lately... bump. Quoting from the other thread...

On that topic, my son and I have been on a Borderlands kick lately. It's not the movie that kicked it off - it's the board game that got us both thinking about it again.

We ran a BL1 playthrough together (me as Mordecai, him as Roland) that we just finished a couple of weeks ago. We didn't feel like starting from scratch, so we grabbed a set of pre-made saves that start with the the second playthrough. We played through it all, including DLC, including killing Crawmerax a dozen times or so.

Then we did a double Pre-Sequel playthrough. I was Wilhelm (built for lasers), and he was a sniper Aurelia. It was a very, very effective pairing. Again, we played through it all, including the DLC, and killed the Invincible Sentinel a few times afterward. Unlike the last time I went through it, we actually had a lot of fun with the final DLC boss, too.

Next we started a BL2 run. We're planning on doing all three playthroughs. I started with Krieg, but switched to Salvador for the second and third. We're planning on going after the various raid bosses and doing some farming after the third playthrough, and Krieg isn't all that great at that. Still I had never played him or Sal, so I ran him through the entire thing once, then copied him and used an editor to turn him into a Salvador that I'll be using going forward.

And yeah, we'll be doing BL3 next. I'm planning on playing Zane, the only one of those characters I haven't played.

By the time we're done, I'll have done a playthrough of every game with every character except for Brick from BL1, plus Nisha, Claptrap, and Aurelia from TPS.

Since I've been neck-deep in Borderlands again (thanks, Mister Torgue's Arena of Badassery), I have had to dig up resources. A lot of the best resources out there have disappeared over time, so I wanted to share what I have found. These apply to all Borderlands titles.

~The Borderlands Wiki, of course, is good for general information. It's surprisingly complete and thorough.

~For information on items, the definitive source is Loot Lemon. It's also the go-to character builder. My Krieg as an example.

~One of the best resources for Borderlands was the Gearbox forum. Gearbox being Gearbox, they decided to shut down their entire forums, deleting more than a decade's worth of discussion and guides in the process (Discord is a terrible replacement for the board format when it comes to discussions!) Luckily, some enterprising individual archived the most popular threads. The skill analysis threads are particularly useful. Borderlands is not a series that requires specific premade builds - there are too many variables, such as what gear you've found, or what you're fighting. But it's absolutely still important to understand how the skills work and how the work (or don't work) together in order to make smart choices.

This is where you find that Krieg's Light the Fuse (start throwing bombs instead of shooting in Fight For Your Life) is good, but really only works when you also have a few points in Strip the Flesh (increase explosive damage.) Or where you find that Salvador's Brawn skill tree makes him unkillable - until Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM, aka third playthrough), at which point the damage scales so much higher than the skills that almost the entire tree becomes useless. Or where you learn that Maya's elemental tree completely breaks down in later TVHM and all of UVHM for the same reason - elemental damage doesn't scale nearly as high as enemy health does. It's really easy to get a build that works well for a while, then suddenly find yourself getting downed while barely able to damage an enemy. What works well late in the first playthrough may be completely unsuitable for the second.

[Jaddison]

I don't think I have found a build for any character that doesn't work in the first two playthroughs...except for Krieg, I have crawled through first run with Krieg but stall soon after.
For BL1 I have played that through so many times I am now trying off the wall builds when I gt an itch to play

[Blackhawk]

I don't think I have found a build for any character that doesn't work in the first two playthroughs...except for Krieg, I have crawled through first run with Krieg but stall soon after.
For BL1 I have played that through so many times I am now trying off the wall builds when I gt an itch to play

Most of Krieg's builds rely on a lot of skill points. He doesn't really shine until he can get one tree's capstone and can be partway down the second. For mine I took Mania, but he didn't really become reliable until I unlocked Release the Beast, and I don't expect him to really hit his stride until I get down to Taste the Blood, Fuel the Blood, and Blood Trance.